1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to the field of building automation, and more particularly to apparatus and methods for identifying, locating, and commissioning devices into a building management system.
2. Description of the Related Art
The problem with resources such as electrical power is that its generation and consumption vary with respect to time. It is limited in supply and the demand for this limited supply is constantly fluctuating. As anyone who has participated in a rolling blackout will concur, the times are more and more frequent when consumers are forced to face the realities of limited supply.
Not only is the supply of electrical power limited, but generation of it to meet demand is quite costly, both in terms of peak demand generators and also in terms of the environmental impact resulting therefrom. There is pressure from within and without the community for more coordinated control of electrical power generations, and in particular for overall reduction of consumption by consumers.
Not surprisingly, the electrical power generation and distribution community has begun to take proactive measures to protect limited supplies of electrical power by imposing a surcharges on consumers for consumption above specified amounts and also for peak consumption. Heretofore, consumers merely paid for the total amount of power that they consumed over a billing period. Today most energy suppliers are not only charging customers for the total amount of electricity they have consumed over the billing period, but they are additionally charging them for exceeding a peak total amount, and for exceeding a peak demand amount.
In addition to surcharges for excess use, utility companies and their agents are also offering incentives to consumers for reductions in overall and peak consumption. Often, these incentives take the form of subsidies to offset the expense of retrofitting existing systems within a facility with more intelligent and power efficient systems. Consider, for example, retrofitting a system of fluorescent light fixtures with more efficient and more intelligent light fixtures. The intelligent fixtures require replacement, but may also require commissioning onto a network that allows for control of the fixtures by a building management system. In basic terms, the management system will determine when it is allowable to reduce the overall power consumption of a corresponding facility by either dimming certain lights or by turning them off altogether.
But the labor involved to commission these more intelligent fixtures, as one skilled in the art will appreciate, is substantial. In many cases building plans do not exist which can accurately locate the fixtures. Replacement of the fixtures is quite labor intensive, and the addition of network commissioning requirements exponentially increases the labor required and the probability for error.
As one skilled in the art will appreciate, present day devices typically are commissioned onto a wired or wireless network in a serial fashion. The preceding paragraphs have specifically exemplified light fixtures within a facility, but the problem of device commissioning extends beyond light fixtures to virtually any type of electrical devices (e.g., routers, cameras, alarms, motion sensors, actuators, etc.) that are required to be commissioned onto a wired or wireless network. Accordingly, a technician will determine the identification number (e.g., MAC ID, serial number, etc.) for a first device, place a first device in a commissioning mode, perform the necessary procedures to commission the device onto the network, and then move on to a second device where the process is repeated, ad nauseum, until a final device is commissioned.
The present inventors have observed the above noted probabilities for both error and exceeding cost, and have determined that they are both limiting and problematic.
Therefore, what is needed is a mechanism that enables multiple devices to be identified and commissioned onto a network.
In addition, what is needed are apparatus and methods that provide for simultaneous identification and commissioning of light-emitting devices onto a network.
What is further needed is a technique for simultaneously identifying, locating, and commissioning a plurality of devices emitting ultraviolet, visible light, and/or infrared waves onto a network.